Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain.

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Monthly Archives: June 2009

now, i don’t have cable, and even when i did, i couldn’t stand to watch fox news, so i’ve never seen smith’s show. but every article i’ve read–from both liberal bloggers and from outlets like the relatively conservative NYT, as here–seems to paint him as an actual rational conservative, someone who doesn’t let ideology completely determine his worldview, to the exclusion of common sense or basic human decency. which is what sets him apart from the rest of the FN on-air personalities.

I moved recently. My new apartment’s totally sweet: nice trees and stuff to look at out the windows, lots of space, dishwasheromg! and everything. What I wasn’t prepared for was an additional, undocumented feature: the kid downstairs who apparently wants to be a drummer. I’m all about encouraging the youth and whatnot but there has to be a better solution than letting him out in the backyard to beat on shit with sticks for hours on end.

Oh and did I mention that he also seems to be trying to learn to sing?

Staff at Goldman Sachs staff can look forward to the biggest bonus payouts in the firm’s 140-year history after a spectacular first half of the year, sparking concern that the big investment banks which survived the credit crunch will derail financial regulation reforms.

i think this might be the breaking point, the point where i literally stop having any faith at all in the government. this whole financial meltdown has been so badly mishandled, and obviously nothing has changed. no one has been held accountable. and reading this, i really couldn’t summon up more than an eye roll.

on the other hand, i’m with the cajun boy in being excited to hear what taibbi is going to say about this:

Hey-lo. Haven’t had much to say… heard Dennis Miller on the radio on my way to/from the grocery store just now and he changed that. Basically his point was that international relations is like being on the playground in elementary school. Obama’s a pussy, Bush was a hardass, the rest of the world (or at least Kim Jong-il, Ahmanamejokegoesherenejad, etc) are bullies, and so forth, and what we need to do is go out and give someone a black eye to show them we’re not to be trifled with.

Look that’s appealing and simplistic and all but it just isn’t true. In the schoolyard we know who the aggressors are- they shake us down for our lunch money or actively rough us up for unspecified reasons ‘cuz they’re just those special kinda dicks. There’s a framework involved here- if shit gets too crazy out on the lawn then we’re getting called in to the principle’s office. If we get too dinged up we visit the nurse. And if shit really gets out of hand the cops get called and that’s generally the last word as far as someone exerting authority. It just doesn’t get much more hardass than having the cops called on you at age 8 right?

Well in international relations there is no schoolyard, no cops, no parents, no teachers, no framework of any sort other than each country’s individual viewpoint, based on their own bias etc, of who is and is not the aggressor. There’s no higher authority (other than perhaps the hated UN) to appeal to if shit gets out of hand and the reality of these kinds of stakes is you don’t know who’s gunning for you until they strike and if you give the wrong person a black eye you’re going to kill people, you’re going to empty the treasury and you’re going to foster a whole generation of people that want to kill you. This isn’t a fucking game. This isn’t about compensating for the way I wish I would’ve acted in high school. This is real life.

so this is old, and i haven’t even read the book the review is about, but i honestly don’t give a damn. this, my friends, is how you tear a book apart and still sound intelligent. this is not the “shut up!” “no, you shut up!” back and forth that so frequently passes for critique and argument among our punditry-obsessed media these days. this is an intellectual TKO.